Quotes about greatness (10000 quotes, page 77)

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm
Disputed

People , Hell , Understanding

“And this afternoon, I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again. All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side. The goals of our coalition are the same as your goals — sovereignty for your country, dignity for your great culture, and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

Life , People , Fear , Freedom

“There is something so gratifying to human vanity in fancying ourselves superior to most around us, that we believe few young men attain their majority without imbibing more or less of the taint of unbelief, and passing through the mists of a vapid moral atmosphere, before they come to the clear, manly, and yet humble perceptions that teach most of us, in the end, our own insignificance, the great benevolence as well as wisdom of the scheme of redemption, and the philosophy of the Christian religion, as well as its divinity.
Perhaps the greatest stumbling-block of the young is a disposition not to yield to their belief unless it conforms to their own crude notions of propriety and reason. If the powers of man were equal to analyzing the nature of the Deity, to comprehending His being, and power, and motives, there would be some little show of sense in thus setting up the pretence of satisfying our judgments in all things, before we yield our credence to a religious system. But the first step we take brings with it the instructive lesson of our incapacity, and teaches the wholesome lesson of humility. From arrogantly claiming a right to worship a deity we comprehend, we soon come to feel that the impenetrable veil that is cast around the Godhead is an indispensable condition of our faith, reverence, and submission.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
The Wing-and-Wing (1842)

Wisdom , Men , Faith , Religion

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life , God , Way , Reality

“Fall'n the great house once so secure in wealth,
Each scattered member shifting for himself.”

Cao Xueqin book Dream of the Red Chamber

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Housing , Wealth

“I myself have a great desire to watch over thy conduct, and visit the subterranean palace, which, no doubt, contains whatever can interest persons like us. There is nothing so pleasing as retiring to caverns: my taste for dead bodies, and everything like mummy, is decided.”

William Beckford book Vathek

J'aurois grande envie de voir ce palais souterrein, rempli d'objets intéressans pour les gens de notre espèce; il n'est rien que j'aime autant que les caverns; mon goût pour les cadavres & les momies est décidé.
Source: Vathek, P. 56; translation p. 34.

Personality , Dead

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Books , School , Family , Faith

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different it's course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for the moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 9

Life , Imagination , Flowers , Thinking

“[Re Florida] Just not being senile is considered great down here.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to J.H. Tiffany (31 March 1819)
1810s

“Here is where a great many professed disciples of Jesus fail of being real disciples. They have regularly enlisted, have put on their uniform, and there they stand before the recruiting office, with knapsacks and blankets on their backs, with muskets at "carry," marking time to the martial music — although some of them don't do even that; and there they have stood since their enlistment, never marching a rod.”

Henry Clay Trumbull (1830–1903) Union Army chaplain

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 116.

Music , Time

“A main problem in the study of organizational change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time”

Fred Emery (1925–1997) Australian psychologist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 21.

Behavior , Understanding , Problem , Study

“What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Playboy Interview (March 1964)

“In this excessive display of armorial bearings — for the two Roses above are crowded with them — one likes to think that these great princes had in their minds not so much the thought of their own importance — which is a modern sort of religion,— as the thought of their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power and attachment by one is met by the assertion of equal devotion by the other, and while both loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, each glares defiance across the church.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Religion , Thinking

“I have experienced this country of the great mountains [Switzerland] superb!…. [but] I positively believe that nature, most appropriate to be reproduced in painting, is the modest landscape which seems just ordinarily and very insignificant. (translation from original French: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original French text:) J'ai trouvé ce pays de grandes montaignes superbe!.. .[mais] Je crois positivement que la nature la plus faite pour être reproduite en peinture, est le paysage modeste et qui parait ordinarement le plus insignificant.
In a letter, 1894; as cited in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum, 2006, p. 19 - ISBN13 978 90 6868 432 2
late quote of Roelofs, in a letter of his travel with his (painter-)sons to Switzerland
1890's

Mountain , Nature , Painting , Country

“Since the great days of Jimmy Greaves, it's the only time anyone's managed to score five times in a Chelsea shirt.”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

"The wit and wisdom of Tony Banks" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4593562.stm, BBC News, 8 January 2006.
after a kiss-and-tell story appeared detailing how former Conservative minister David Mellor, his close friend and fellow Chelsea fan, wore football kit during sex.

Time

“The problem that confronts some of you younger ones – you’ve got to find an alternative to war. War is something men have hated but yet cherished. Out of wars have come profit of various sorts, power, glory. Sometimes out of them has become a defense of freedom. But you will not get that out of the kind of war we fight now with the weapons that our great scientists have given us. We have got to find a substitute for war, and the substitute isn’t surrender.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

Men , Hate , War , Problem

“I would like to congratulate Anil for his long and successful career. He is a great competitor and every single player of my team, who has played against him, is proud of the cricketer. I wish he enjoys his time after the game.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Ricky Ponting.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Game , Time , Success

“No sooner were the merits of Mr. Arkwright’s inventions fully understood, from the great increase of materials produced in a given time, and the superior quality of the goods manufactured; no sooner was it known, that his assiduity and great mechanical abilities were rewarded with success; than the very men, who had before treated him with contempt and derision, began to devise means to rob him of his inventions, and profit by his ingenuity. Every attempt that cunning could suggest for this purpose was made; by the seduction of his servants and workmen, (whom he had with great labour taught the business) a knowledge of his machinery and inventions was fully gained. From that time many persons began to pilfer something from him; and then by adding something else of their own, and by calling similar productions and machines by other names, they hoped to screen themselves from punishment. So many of these artful and designing individuals had at length infringed on his patent right, that he found it necessary to prosecute several: but it was not without great difficulty, and considerable expence, that he was able to make any proof against them; conscious that their conduct was unjustifiable, their proceedings were conducted with the utmost caution and secresy. Many of the persons employed by them were sworn to secresy, and their buildings and workshops were kept locked up, or otherwise secured. This necessary proceeding of Mr. Arkwright, occasioned, as in the case of poor Hargrave, an association against him, of the very persons whom he had served and obliged. Formidable, however, as it was, Mr. Arkwright persevered, trusting that he should obtain in the event, that satisfaction which he appeared to be justly entitled to.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 23-24

Men , Hope , Art , Business

“Dear Mr. Rosenberg [art-dealer in Paris, then], - Many thanks for your good letters which are a great encouragement to me. I assure you that you are the man who has encouraged me the most so far. Please excuse the tone of declaration. I will also show my gratitude when I am in Paris by doing a good life-size portrait of you, or of a member of your family if you prefer, and I would like you to accept it as a gift. I intend to be in Paris around 15 November. My mother and my brother send their best wishes.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Mr. Rosenberg, please accept my devotion, esteem and gratitude.
Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Rosenberg, Rome, 13 Oct. 1925; from LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO TO LÉONCE ROSENBERG, 1925-1939 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/309-338-Rosenberg_Metaphysical_Art_ENG.pdf, p. 317
1920s and later

Life , Family , Art , Gratitude

“I find that I can agree fully with my good friend Patrick Henry when he said it cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Edward Rutledge (1749–1800) American politician

This is clearly spurious. The only published appearance of this attribution yet located is in Baking Recipes of Our Founding Fathers : Authentic Baking Recipes from the Wives and Mothers Of, & Trivia About, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and Our Constitution (2004), by Robert W. Pelton, p. 213. As the "religionists" passage cited was not written until 1956, and was not misattributed to Henry until 1988, it is obvious that Rutledge (who died in 1800) can neither have said that he agreed with it nor attributed it to Henry.
Misattributed

Religion , Christ

“So why is Japan different? Why do its top officials – and this trend extends across senior government posts – resign office, seemingly at the drop of a hat? The theories are endless, most of them relying on oft-repeated but simplistic stereotypes about the supposed centrality of honor, saving face, and respect in Japanese culture… Japan's problems are too vast, and its strengths too great, to be ruled by something as capricious and frivolous as the whims of the majority.”

Max Fisher American journalist

Max Fisher, "Why Do Japanese Prime Ministers Keep Resigning" http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/why-do-japanese-prime-ministers-keep-resigning/239850/ (3 June 2011), The Atlantic.

Problem

“Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love , Life , God , Age

“Good is the enemy of great. That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

As cited in: Margaret A. Byrnes, ‎Jeanne Baxter (2006), The Principal's Leadership Counts!. p. 99
Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005

Business , Problem

“There is no War on Terrorism; it is The Great Game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, 'War on Terror' a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist, America itself http://johnpilger.com/articles/-war-on-terror-a-smokescreen-created-by-the-ultimate-terrorist-america-itself

War , Game , Nature , Speed

“We have been in a process of attaining a great degree of luxury, degrees of luxury which distract us… and we are consumed with such matters as wrap-around octophonic sound in our automobiles and so forth, we are becoming quite sophisticated with respect to non-necessities. This has happened to nations in the past, and it is my belief that man can cope with adversity, and that his most difficult problem, is coping with prosperity.”

Jeremiah Denton (1924–2014) American Vietnam War POW and politician

Jeremiah http://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-public-television-documentaries-jeremiah/ (2015) 44:22.

Problem , Past

“The Usefulness of the Mathematicks in General, and of some Parts of them in Particular, in the common Affairs of Humane Life, has rendered some competent Knowledge of them very necessary to a great Part of Mankind, and very convenient to all the Rest that are any way conversant beyond the Limits of their own particular callings.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Preface; lead paragraph
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702

Life , Way , Knowledge , Parting

“There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people — the 150 or 160 million — is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted by John F. Kennedy in an address in Atlantic City at the Convention of the United Auto Workers (8 May 1962) As reported in the Ready Reference: John F. Kennedy Quotations of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx

People

“It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address at the Congress of the Association of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal, September 1, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Money , Democracy , Universe

“Because let’s be honest about this — is there any law New Atheists can point to that has been their political output? That has changed due to their activism? What has it done? It sells books, it makes for great polemics, it keeps journalists busy, but there has been no political accomplishment.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/professor-jacques-berlinerblau-tells-atheists-stop-whining/2012/09/14/0fdaf7f4-feab-11e1-98c6-ec0a0a93f8eb_story.html?utm_term=.6145b4fb44a8 "Professor Jacques Berlinerblau tells atheists: Stop whining!"

Change , Law , Books , Business

“It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 88

Sense

“A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight.
Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man’s relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

Truth , World , Hope , History

“If we have nothing to do but service our own pleasure – because society has taught us that's all we're worth and we're exiled from positions of authority from which we could actually shape society – then we just become hedonists. Eventually, despite how great it may look on Saturday night, come Monday morning there's just purposelessness.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

Pleasure , Night

“[Footnote] Great men seem to have only one purpose in life — getting into history. That may be all they are good for.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Captain John Smith

Life , Men , History

“As leader of our nation, it is my sacred responsibility to defend democracy and the nation's interests. Let me assure you all that in my responsibility, I will not fail. My commitment, and that of my government, to the welfare, safety and security of the people is unshakable. Our nation has great potential, and already we have begun to realize our dream of a better and fairer Fiji. Let us not deny ourselves this golden opportunity of moving towards a better and brighter tomorrow.”

Timoci Bavadra (1934–1989) Fijian politician

Radio broadcast, 24 April 1987 (excerpts)

People , Dreams , Democracy

“The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?”

André Gide book The Immoralist

Source: The Immoralist (1902), p. 159

People , Beauty , Nature

“We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation. However, our political-economic system, capitalism, is geared primarily to the accumulation of capital, which prevents us from addressing this enormous challenge and accelerates the destruction. answer to the dire ecological problems we face, because when looking at the human effect on the planet there is nothing gradual about it; it is a Great Acceleration and a rift in the Earth system. The problem is rising exponentially, while worsening even faster than that would suggest, because we are in the process of crossing all sorts critical thresholds and facing a bewildering number of tipping points.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Problem

“I believe until a man has given up himself he has given up nothing - all his knowledge of accepted aesthetics are of no avail until he has stepped aside from them and given up himself – himself only through the eyes of himself. What a problem everlasting then is it not? A life time of breathless endeavor to be the thing and do the thing of his being – So easy to travel along with claques and crowds, voicing vociferously the great discoveries of each – How ineffably difficult, voicing the soul of one man – alone to himself and – then to whomever else hears..”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to w:Alfred Sieglitz, June 1911, Hartley Archive, Yale University; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 147
1908 - 1920

Life , Travel , Soul , Knowledge

“Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Cowley
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Hope

“For the social ecologist language is not "communication." It is not just "message." It is substance. It is the cement that holds humanity together. It creates community and communication…. Social ecologists need not be "great" writers; but they have to be respectful writers, caring writers.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The Ecological Vision (1993)
1990s and later

Communication

“The power of impeachment is given by this Constitution, to bring great offenders to punishment. It is calculated to bring them to punishment for crimes which it is not easy to describe, but which every one must be convinced is a high crime and misdemeanor against the government.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 28, 1788, p. 107.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

“The Armenians had a fair warning of what would happen to them in case they joined our enemies. Three months ago I sent for the Armenian Patriarch and I told him that if the Armenians attempted to start a revolution or to assist the Russians, I would be unable to prevent mischief from happening to them. My warning produced no effect and the Armenians started a revolution and helped the Russians. You know what happened at Van. They obtained control of the city, used bombs against government buildings, and killed a large number of Moslems. We knew that they were planning uprisings in other places. You must understand that we are now fighting for our lives at the Dardanelles and that we are sacrificing thousands of men. While we are engaged in such a struggle as this, we cannot permit people in our own country to attack us in the back. We have got to prevent this no matter what means we have to resort to. It is absolutely true that I am not opposed to the Armenians as a people. I have the greatest admiration for their intelligence and industry, and I should like nothing better than to see them become a real part of our nation. But if they ally themselves with our enemies, as they did in the Van district, they will have to be destroyed. I have taken pains to see that no injustice is done; only recently I gave orders to have three Armenians who had been deported returned to their homes, when I found that they were innocent. Russia, France, Great Britain, and America are doing the Armenians no kindness by sympathizing with and encouraging them. I know what such encouragement means to a people who are inclined to revolution. When our Union and Progress Party attacked Abdul Hamid, we received all our moral encouragement from the outside world. This encouragement was of great help to us and had much to do with our success. It might similarly now help the Armenians and their revolutionary programme. I am sure that if these outside countries did not encourage them, they would give up all their efforts to oppose the present government and become law-abiding citizens. We now have this country in our absolute control and we can easily revenge ourselves on any revolutionists.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present" - Page 188 - by Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen - Social Science - 2005.

Men , Pain , People , World

“And second, medical space research may revolutionize the technology and the techniques of modern medicine. Whatever new devices are created, for example, to monitor our astronauts, to measure their heart activity, their breathing, their brain waves, their eye motion, at great distances and under difficult conditions, will also represent a major advance in general medical instrumentation. Heart patients may even be able to wear a light monitor which will sound a warning if their activity exceeds certain limits. An instrument recently developed to record automatically the impact of acceleration upon an astronaut's eyes will also be of help to small children who are suffering miserably from eye defects, but are unable to describe their impairment. And also by the use of instruments similar to those used in Project Mercury, this Nation's private as well as public nursing services are being improved, enabling one nurse now to give more critically ill patients greater attention than they ever could in the past.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Children , Light , Suffering , Past

“It is the call of the beauty — robed ones
To worship the great Beauty.
It is the call of God
Through silent intelligences
And starburst of feelings.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Songs of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Quotes drawn from the poem "What is Love?"

God , Beauty , Feeling , Intelligence

“As I understand it, your policemen are chosen by their height and weight; they must meet certain requirements as to heft—as thought the only crimes they had to cope with were riots and gang feuds. Bulk—the great American ideal, whether in art, architecture, table d‘hôte meals, or detectives. An entrancin‘ notion.”

S. S. Van Dine book The Benson Murder Case

Ch 25
The Benson Murder Case (1926)

Art , Understanding

“Though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , World , Fear , Way

“Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small…and you will escape the jealousy of the great.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

God , Jealousy

“"They lit us up! Missiles incoming! Six count, closing, dead astern!" "Back-trace the missile lock and feed it to the computer for counter-fire." "Great idea! I'll get right on that first thing as soon as I graduate from gunnery school!"”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Nick Rostu and Mace Windu, p. 330
Shatterpoint (2004)

School , Idea , Dead

“In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich - a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered - we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, December 18, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Learning , Country

“In 1934 I warned Mr. Baldwin that the Germans had a secret Air Force and were rapidly overhauling ours. I gave definite figures and forecasts. Of course, it was all denied with all the weight of official authority. I was depicted a scaremonger. Less than six months after Mr. Baldwin had to come down to the House and admit he was wrong. … He got more applause for making this mistake, which may prove fatal to the British Empire and to British freedom, than ordinary people would do after they rendered some great service which added to its security and power. Well, Mr. Chamberlain was, next to Mr. Baldwin, the most powerful Member of that Government. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knew all the facts. His judgment failed just like that of Mr. Baldwin and we are are suffering from the consequences today.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chingford (9 December 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 1026
The 1930s

People , Secret , Freedom , Suffering

“Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VI https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Things Become More Serious, Section II, p 110
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Life , Art

“There under the cross is the sinner's sanctuary — there, my friend, is the place for you and me. The first smiling look we shall get from God will be when looking unto Jesus; and the first time that we shall experience the alacrity of a lightened conscience, the relief and elasticity of the great life-burden lifted off, will be when we have laid our sins on the Lamb of God.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 172.

Life , God , Smile , Time

“A fourth enduring strand of policy has been to help improve the life of man. From the Marshall Plan to this very moment tonight, that policy has rested on the claims of compassion, and the certain knowledge that only a people advancing in expectation will build secure and peaceful lands. This year I propose major new directions in our program of foreign assistance to help those countries who will help themselves. We will conduct a worldwide attack on the problems of hunger and disease and ignorance. We will place the matchless skill and the resources of our own great America, in farming and in fertilizers, at the service of those countries committed to develop a modern agriculture. We will aid those who educate the young in other lands, and we will give children in other continents the same head start that we are trying to give our own children. To advance these ends I will propose the International Education Act of 1966. I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared—for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by increasing our research—and we will earmark funds to help their efforts. In the next year, from our foreign aid sources, we propose to dedicate $1 billion to these efforts, and we call on all who have the means to join us in this work in the world.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Hunger , Children , People

“People who take things too literally don't get much of anything from my teaching. By never saying anything I mean, I say a great deal. I never mean anything I say under oath. I never mean exactly what I say. Not even this. You have to read between the words.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

In John Sloan on Drawing and Painting. Mineola NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Originally published in 1939 as The Gist of Art, p. 7.
The Gist of Art (1939)

People , Reading

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Let America Be America Again (1935)

Death , People , Mountain

“A lot of the times with porn, it's instant fame. The only thing I can compare it to is being a child actor. You get it fast, then there's a shelf-life for it. With mainstream films, you've got to go to acting classes, you've really got to hustle, there's so much competition, but with these [porn] guys, if you're good-looking with a great body, you're in like Flynn.”

John Roecker (1966) American film director

[The Bay Area Reporter, Erotic superstars, up-close & personal: here!TV's 'Everything You Wanted to Know About Gay Porn Stars', December 4, 2008, David, Lamble, Benro Enterprises, Inc.]

Life , Guy , Time

“It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Octopus Marooned"
The Gentle Grafter (1908)

Beauty

“The Great British Public; a nation of Blue Peter presenters.”

Luke Haines (1967) English musician and songwriter

Liner notes to Christie Malry's Own Double Entry OST, 2001

“But the honest truth is that what drives me as an economist is that economics is fun. I think I understand why so many people think that economics is a boring subject, but they are wrong. On the contrary, there is hardly anything I know that is as exciting as finding that the great events that move history, the forces that determine the destiny of empires and the fate of kings, can sometimes be explained, predicted, or even controlled by a few symbols on a printed page. We all want power, we all want success, but the ultimate reward is the simple joy of understanding.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Incidents from my career http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/incidents.html (1995)

Fate , People , Truth , History

“Our opponents like to try and make you believe that Conservatism is a privilege of the few. But Conservatism conserves all that is great and best in our national heritage.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Path To Power (1995)

“I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Visite" in Discours du Grand Sommeil (1920); later published in Collected Works Vol. 4 (1947)

Sadness , Dead

“Development of Western Science is based on two great achievements, the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (Renaissance). In my opinion one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to J.S. Switzer (23 April 1953), quoted in The Scientific Revolution: a Hstoriographical Inquiry By H. Floris Cohen (1994), p. 234 http://books.google.com/books?id=wu8b2NAqnb0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA234#v=onepage&q&f=false, and also partly quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein edited by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 405 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA405#v=onepage&q&f=false
1950s

Science

“The question poses itself whether we should look on with folded arms while those Germans of the Baltic countries who, despite all the persecution, all the misery and all the difficulties have stuck to the German language and German culture, are being slaughtered…It would be incomprehensible if we, who have exerted ourselves for the freedom of ethnically foreign nations, failed to let our hearts beat first of all for the Balts, who are our own flesh and blood…If to-day you go to Riga or Mitau, you will be confronted by such a pure, unadulterated Germanism that sometimes you would wish it could be united with Germany…When, in addition to Courland, we have also occupied Latvia and Estonia, then I hope that the day will also come when this old German soil will lie under the protection of the great Reich…This does not mean annexation of these territories. But it does mean a free Baltic in close dependence on Germany, under our military, moral, political, and cultural protection. I think it would be one of the finest aims of this world war if we could merge this piece of loyal Germanism with ourselves as intimately as it desires to be merged…The Baltic Germans have completely preserved their German culture: a shining example for the Americanized grandchildren of German grandfathers.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (19 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 149-150.
1910s

War , Lie , World , Hope

“It is, perhaps, a well founded objection to Mr. Ricardo, that he sometimes reasons upon abstract principles to which he gives too great a generalization.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xlvii

“Socialism is the legitimate and inevitable corollary of Mr. Bright's doctrine. If want is the crime of the Government, then the duty of the Government must be to provide against want. This is Socialism pure and simple. It begins with national workshops, and ends with what Mr. Carlyle calls a "whiff of grapeshot." Mr. Bright may pretend to direct his attacks against the aristocracy alone, but it is the possessors of capital, the employers of labour, the great middle class of this country who have real cause to dread his revolutionary language.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

William Harcourt, ‘Pot and Kettle’, Saturday Review (21 March, 1857).
A. G. Gardiner, The Life of Sir William Harcourt. Volume I (1827-1886) (London: Constable, 1923), p. 90.

Country

“All political decisions are taken under great pressure, and if a treaty serves its turn for ten or twenty years, the wisdom of its framers is sufficiently confirmed.”

H. A. L. Fisher (1865–1940) British politician

Political Prophecies (1918).

Wisdom , Decision

“Each person is a wholistic being who has a material aspect and a metaphysical aspect, but who is the soul. The problems of the world are so great that they cannot be adressed by looking at just one aspect of our existence. There must be an appropriate marriage between the material, the metaphysical, and the spiritual. This is not only healthy but it is imperative for our survival.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 3: Angels and Demigods, p. 47

Marriage , World , Soul , Problem

“Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), pp. 285-286; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 229): Mathematics and Science.

Life , World , History , Intelligence

“It has been said by Sanatkumara and the great-spirited Vyasa, and it is enjoined in the Veda, O, King that one should go to Pratudaka on pilgrimage.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

w:PulastyaPulastya in p. 49.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

“Nietzsche's great concept of Yea-saying gave him a notion of purpose that is seen as positive. Nietzsche, in short, was a religious mystic.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 275

“I feel more important to just encourage people to get involved, one way or another. If I can inspire some leaders, that would be great. I don't know if I want to be a leader.”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

"Q & A: 'Joe the Plumber'" interview by Sarah Pulliam, in Christianity Today (May 2009) Web-only article

People , Way , Feeling

“Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell’d. Study not only their productions. There is a still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all grand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots and martyrs — of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of history — deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

"Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)" (1839)

Death , School , Art , History

“Great is the rose
Infected by the tomb,
Yet burgeoning
Indifferent to death.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"Tadmore"
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)

Death , Indifference

“I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself. … The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here. … I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me. … To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going …”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Letter to his sister Denise, as quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, pp. 270–271

Children , Age , Feeling , Time

“The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 8

Knowledge

“May the day come soon, when the people of the world will rouse themselves, and together effectively stamp out any threat to peace in whatever quarter of the world it may be found. When that day comes, there shall be "peace on earth and goodwill amongst men", as was announced by the Angels when that great messenger of peace, Our Lord came to earth.”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1961)

Men , People , World , Peace

“The blue dye indigo was obtained from the indigo plant by the Egyptians more than 4000 years ago. …The famous and valuable "purple of Tyre" was perhaps first made in Crete in very early times… obtained at great cost… from tiny marine molluscs. …The scarlet dye mentioned in the Bible was obtained from the kermes insect”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

hence the name "crimson"
A Short History of Chemistry (1937)

Time

“Chateau Gaillard had utilized the last of the newly built, huge great towers, and Rochester had depended on its early twelfth-century tower. During the course of the thirteenth century defense shifted to a towered wall, the enceinte or enclosure castle. Two plans emerged: the castle could rely on a series of courtyards, which had to be taken one after another, or on a concentric defense in which a second wall entirely surrounded the inner wall.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Dependency

“The deepest and most enduring thirst common to us all is the desire for love and happiness. You and I spend a great part of our lives struggling towards self-fulfilment and joy, while at the same time we are very occupied in the daily responsibilities to our families, our work, the countless little things that absorb our time.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

Love , Family , Time , Joy

“You say I look goofy? OK, great. You say it's comedy? Great. Whatever anyone thought, I didn't care. Could be goony, could be sexy, could be stupid, could be cool. I didn't know, but as long as it was something, you know?”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

On his performances
Rolling Stone interview (2003)

Stupidity

“We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

At Press Conference at Pittsburgh, September 2009.
2009

People , History

“3941. Pride is as loud a Beggar as Want; and a great deal more saucy.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1750) : Pride is as loud a Beggar as Want, and a great deal more saucy. .
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Globalisation is a great thing, and the genie's out of the bottle; it's called the Information Revolution. It has a promise to bring opportunity and information to all corners of the world. It's a wonderful thing.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

29:41–29:55
"Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

World

“As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 57-58

Truth , Soul , Business , Problem

“If anything I probably gravitate to things with great melodies/harmonies, and interesting/syncopated beats.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Connexion Bizarre interview with Iris, 2009

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"The Novel Démeublé"
Not Under Forty (1936)

Parting

“Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tamed creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within – for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster.”

Sueton (70–126) Roman historian

Gore Vidal, On Our Own Now (London, 1976), p. 72.
Criticism

Angels

“Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 286.

“I used to think I was great in bed until I discovered that all my girlfriends suffered from asthma.”

Jerry Sadowitz (1961) Scottish comedian

The Pall-Bearer's Revue (1992)

Thinking , Suffering

“As indicated by its title "A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology", this book is not just concerned with the chronology of events or with biographical details of great psychiatrists and psychopathologists. It has as its main interest, a study of the ideas underlying theories about mental illness and mental health in the Western world. These are studied according to their historical development from ancient times to the twentieth century.
The book discusses the history of ideas about the nature of mental illness, its causation, its treatment and also social attitudes towards mental illness. The conceptions of mental illness are discussed in the context of philosophical ideas about the human mind and the medical theories prevailing in different periods of history. Certain perennial controversies are presented such as those between the psychological and organic approaches to the treatment of mental illness, and those between the focus on disease entities (nosology) versus the focus on individual personalities. The beliefs of primitive societies are discussed, and the development of early scientific ideas about mental illness in Greek and Roman times. The study continues through the medieval age to the Renaissance. More emphasis is then placed on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the enlightenment of the eighteenth, and the emergence of modern psychological and psychiatric ideas concerning psychopathology in the twentieth century.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Introduction text.
A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology, (1990)

Health , Books , Age , World

“[I]n the system of Copernicus there are found many and great inconveniences; for both the loading of the earth with triple motion is very incommodious, and the separation of the sun from the company of the planets, with which it has so many passions in common, is likewise a difficulty, and the introduction of so much immobility into nature, by representing the sun and stars as immovable, especially being of all bodies the highest and most radiant, and making the moon revolve about the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions of his, are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer. But if it be granted that the earth moves, it would seem more natural to suppose that there is no system at all, but scattered globes… than to constitute a system of which the sun is the centre. And this the consent of ages and of antiquity has rather embraced and approved. For the opinion concerning the motion of the earth is not new, but revived from the ancients… whereas the opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable is altogether new… and was first introduced by Copernicus. …But if the earth moves, the stars may either be stationary, as Copernicus thought or, as it is far more probable, and has been suggested by Gilbert, they may revolve each round its own centre in its own place, without any motion of its centre, as the earth itself does… But either way, there is no reason why there should not be stars above stars til they go beyond our sight.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (1653, written ca. 1612) Ch. 6, as quoted in "Description of the Intellectual Globe," The Works of Francis Bacon (1889) pp. 517-518, https://books.google.com/books?id=lsILAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA517 Vol. 4, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, Douglas Denon Heath.

Age , World , Way , Star

“We have to realize the fact that the Arab nation is a great nation and will remain stable as its roots are solid; what is happening now does not suit it nor its history.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Leadership & Success quotes, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=d2778960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.

History

“Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Life , Men

“A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa.”

Peter Heylin (1599–1662) English ecclesiastic and author of polemical, historical, political and theological tracts

Cosmographie (1657)

World , Sea

“Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1890s

Religion , Way , Thinking , Horse

“We are a great and strong country — perhaps the greatest and strongest in the history of the world. But greatness and strength are not our natural right. They are not gifts which are automatically ours forever. It took toil and courage and determination to build this country — and it will take those same qualities if we are to maintain it. For, although a country may stand still, history never stands still. Thus, if we do not soon begin to move forward again, we will inevitably be left behind. And I know that Americans today are tired of standing still — and that we do not intend to be left behind. But effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. For, as Socrates told us, "If a man does not know to what port he is sailing, no wind is favorable."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Speech at the Coliseum, Raleigh, North Carolina" (17 September 1960) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=74076
1960

World , History , Courage , Nature

“He was very pure in mind and heart. He was a lover: a lover not only of his race but a lover of all mankind. His heart was so broad, so great, so magnanimous, and this gave him a most sincere feeling of absolute oneness with everyone. This is what made him so divinely great.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

On Martin Luther King, Jr.
America The Beautiful (2010)

Feeling , Lovers , Heart , Sincerity

“I am going to help everyone I can to understand the Buddha’s teachings, I am going to help everyone I can to recite the Great Compassion Mantra and the Heart Sutra, I am going to let everyone know how great the Buddha’s teachings are. I am going to make world peace a reality.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Master Jun Hong Lu - Ambassador of Peace Education https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrZUen8PMVI&feature=youtu.be&list=PLU6NSq1Oq8pxTDav8m7__9IVbfqlTPB4C&t=175, YouTube, 2016
Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door

World , Peace , Understanding , Reality

“I started reading Flaubert's 'Salambô'. The first chapter was very strong. I prefer Flaubert above Zola, the Concourt even more. No doubt you know the Concourts, Edm. and Jules, two brothers. 'Manette Salomon' is one of their most beautiful creations. If you could read that, I believe you do me and yourself a great pleasure. The type of Chassagnol, the man who understands so much about Art - yes, he has the purest ideas on art of all - I find [him] adorable. He understands everything and that's why he can not be an artist himself or the greatest. I recommend that book to anyone, layman or painter and I will buy it myself.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik ben begonnen met Flaubert's Salambô te lezen. 't eerste hoofdstuk was verduveld kranig. Flaubert bevalt me beter dan Zola, de Concourt nog meer. Zonder twijfel kent U de Concourt, Edm. en Jules, twee broers. Manette Salomon vind ik een van hun mooiste scheppingen. Als U dat eens las zou U mij en Uzelf geloof ik een groot genoegen doen. De type van Chassagnol de man die zooveel begrijpt van Kunst, ja er 't zuiverste denkbeeld over heeft van allen, vind ik aanbiddelijk. Hij begrijpt alles en kan daardoor zelf geen kunstenaar zijn of de grootste. Ik beveel dat boek aan iedereen aan, leek of schilder en zal 't me koopen.
Quote of Breitner in his letter to A.P. van Stolk, 15 Nov. 1881; as cited in Breitner en Parijs – master-thesis 9928758 https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/8382], by Jacobine Wieringa, Faculty of Humanities Theses, Utrecht, (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek) pp. 10-11
before 1890

Pleasure , Books , Beauty , Art

Quotes about greatness page 77

Quotes about greatness
page 77